By Aimee “Ashlanne” Rekoske

It is a brand new year and with it comes brand new SOE Employees to meet. We want you to get to know folks in Finance, Human Resources, Development, Legal, Quality Assurance, Office Operations, Customer Service, Administrative Assistants, and Marketing, just to name a few. We have people from all walks of life here at SOE.

Each month the Community Team will highlight one of SOE’s many diverse employees in a monthly feature titled, “SOE Employee Spotlight.” Each month our spotlighted employee will also appear in some fashion on the Official SOE Podcast. In our May spotlight for 2012 you will meet Tom Toby, Senior Animator for EverQuest II. Take a moment to find out about what a typical day in the office is like for him, what his favorite SOE game is, and other fun tidbits. As a special bonus, we included a screenshot from his favorite SOE game for you to download!



Tell us about yourself! What’s your name and what do you do here at SOE? How long have you been working at SOE?

My Name is Tom Tobey and I am Senior Animator on EQ2. This is my second stint at SOE. I animated on EQ1 from Planes of Power until Depths of Darkhollow, went to Seattle and worked on Pirates of the Burning Sea, but the rain drove me nuts and I have been back in San Diego on EQ2 since 2008.



How did you get into the industry?

I was doing inbetweens, clean-ups and assistant animation at Don Bluth Studios around 1991ish when the 2D film industry hit a slow down. Luckily I was able to get a job with a small game company that was making Sega Genesis games and I have been animating video games ever since.

Tell us what a typical workday is like for you.

I get in about 8:30 and start drinking coffee. It’s pretty quiet in the office until 9:30-10:00 but most of the character team gets in pretty early. I’m usually working on one character at a time, and usually get between 3 and 5 animations done per day. I would rather have a couple of monsters to work on at a time, it keeps it more interesting for me to be able to bounce back and forth a bit. I will also get one off requests from designers, (I need this draconian to have an injured idle) and I will usually animate those requests as soon as I get them.

Let’s talk favorites… What is your favorite SOE game title? Do you have a favorite memory or moment from that particular game?

Right now my favorite SOE game is EQ2. My favorite SOE game moment was in EQ1 when we launched the new Frogloks. It was really fun watching players trying to keep them out of Grobb.

If you could be any fictional character, who would you be?

I think I am a fictional character.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Hmmmmm only one? You can’t have super strength without invulnerability. Every time you punched something you would break your hand…. Flying would be fun, how about the ability to transform into any animal living or dead? I would do a daily rampage up the 15N in T-Rex form!

Vampires or Zombies and why?

Neither – I’m more Downton Abbey.

If you could go on vacation and money wasn’t an object what would you do?

Wine tasting through South of France maybe? I have always wanted to go to Tahiti… If money was no object, I’m off to the moon!



Enjoy these images from EverQuest II, Tom’s favorite SOE Game!





We hope you enjoyed meeting Tom and will take a listen to a future Podcast where Tom will be featured. Return next month for another SOE Employee Spotlight.

Employee Spotlight Archives




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